


Instead of Flowers We Gave Each Other Bodies

by anxiousAnarchist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Pale Romance, Pre-Sburb, there's some blood but it's not too gory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxiousAnarchist/pseuds/anxiousAnarchist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Her teeth are chattering together and her mouth's drawn in a little thin line. This isn't the Feferi you've come to know in the times you've spent together so far - the one who visits you on your ship, tells you embarrassing stories about Eridan, makes atrocious fish puns, sings songs - this is another girl entirely.  </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Instead of Flowers We Gave Each Other Bodies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orta/gifts).



When Feferi swims up to your boat you know there's trouble. You can feel it in the air.

"Hi," you say, grabbing her arm and helping her swing over the lip of the boat.

She doesn't say anything back, just stands on the deck, shivering in the light breeze.

"Fucking hell, Fef!" you say. "Though you'd be used to the cold by now, jeez."

You sling your jacket off your shoulders and slide it around hers, because Eridan won't ever let you hear the end of it if you let his moirail die. Her teeth are chattering together and her mouth's drawn in a little thin line. This isn't the Feferi you've come to know in the times you've spent together so far - the one who visits you on your ship, tells you embarrassing stories about Eridan, makes atrocious fish puns, sings songs - this is another girl entirely.

"Hey," you say. You place an awkward hand between her shoulderblades. You're not sure how this "comfort" thing goes, so you settle with just patting her back. "What's got you all bent out of shape?"

"It's just not glubbing right!" she says, pacing, wringing her hands. "I didn't fucking ask for this, this fucking _monster_ of a mother."

She kicks the mast so hard it shakes. She's tearing her hair out, handfuls of it. You've never seen Feferi _angry_ before.

"She wants some food, she can glubbing well catch it herself! Why'd I have to end up with such a shoalfish lusus anyway?"

"This is about your lusus?" you ask.

"Yes it's about my fucking lusus!" she screams.

Her hands are moving rapidly up and down her arms, she's scoring dark purple lines all over them. She's vibrating with this sort of tenseness and you have never wanted to do anything more badly than you've wanted to calm her down right now.

"Get ahold of yourself, Peixes!"

Another scream rips itself from her throat and you don't know what she'll do to herself if she keeps up like this.

You grab her head and force her to look you in the eye. "Hey," you say. "Hey, Peixes, just look at me, okay?! Just concentrate on how stunning and mesmerizing my eyes are!"

Feferi tries to look away, but you yank her head back. You run a hand through her still-wet bangs, and that seems to do something. Her eyes get a fraction less wild. So you do it again. You lean your forehead against hers and you stroke her hair, get it all tangled up in your fingers.

When you brush against the edge of a gill, she _sighs,_ just sort of slumps down into your arms.

"We're going to sit now," you say, and arrange her on the deck.

You run another finger along her gill and she sighs again. You kiss her forehead. "Come on Peixies, pull yourself together here."

She hiccups, and begins to cry, hot tyrian tears gushing out of her eyes at an alarming rate.

"Sh-she'll hurt me," she gasps in between sobs. "An, an everyone else. if I don't keep her happy."

Your name is Vriska Serket, and you don't really do empathy. But this girl puddled in your lap has almost as much blood on her hands as you do, and her mom's a right terror, and that's enough to work off of.

You drag the long ropes of her hair over one shoulder, and begin to braid it (clumsily, unevenly) as you talk.

"You know my lusus is a giant spider?" (she shakes her head) "Well, she is! And I have to do the same thing. Feed her, I mean. All the time, like, every fucking day, more than once." Your hands tug at her hair uncertainly, but her breath has evened out so you think you're doing the right thing. "I remember the first time I had to - you know -" (you mean kill someone) "I was nervous as all hell. But I knew I had to, because otherwise the stupid bitch would eat me, and that was no good."

Her hands are fists on your knees. "So what's your glubbing point?"

You don't know, to be fucking honest.

"I guess, since I'm obviously the best at keeping monster lusii under control, I could help you out."

"Eridan usually does that," she says, scrubbing her eyes of tears.

"Well, Eridan's a giant douche!" you say, and she laughs, and oh that's a good sound.

\---

You take the trolls.

She takes the lusii.

It is _so fucking easy._

\---

Until the last one.

"Why are you doing this to me?" the boy shrieks as you dangle him over the edge of a cliff.

"You lost," you say. "Too bad! Maybe if you'd played better you'd deserve to win!"

He claws at your hands, rips gouges in them. He fucking throws up, all over your shoes.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" you shout.

"I don't want to die!" he says. "You crazy - I just want to live!"

You vision gets all hazy and white and you can feel your blood pump double, triple time through your veins. Shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up, you think, and only later will you realize you were screaming it.

You choke him till your hands are brown, until Feferi comes along and pulls you off of what's left.

\---  
You know you terrify people, with your freaky eye and dark laugh and endless lucky throws of the dice.

The secret, though, is that you kind of terrify yourself sometimes too.

\---

Feferi sits with you in your room and runs a brush through your hair. There's blood and bits of gore all through it, and it hurts when she tugs the brush down.

"Watch it," you say.

"Shut up, it's for your own good."

You look at your hands. There's still a bit of brown blood clinging under your fingernails and around your cuticles. Your hands are shaking.

You've never done that before. Not - not kill someone. You've done that before, but never because you were angry.

"What's happening to me?" you ask.

"Hmm?" says Feferi, laying down the hairbrush.

"I don't know what's happening to me," you say. "I don't - I don't want to be like that. I don't want to - I - I -"

You don't know what to say but Feferi pulls you closer to her, and wraps an arm around your waist. "Shhh," she says. "You'll be fine."

"No I won't!" you say, trying to drag the arm off from around her waist. She kicks at your ankle and you bite her shoulder and you end up lying next to each other, all tangled up.

Feferi rubs her nose against your cheek and grabs both of your hands in hers. "Do you want me to make sure you don't get out of hand?"

The look she's giving you is deadly serious, and you should stop to think about how you're fucking up her quadrants, but honestly fuck Eridan, fuck _everyone_ but this girl.

"Yeah," you say.

When she smiles it's like something heavy's come off your chest. You kiss her cheek, her hair, wind your hands around her back, revel in the fact that she'll let you do what no one else ever did, that she'll trust you enough to be this close to her without trying to kill her.

"You are a glubbing mess, Vriska," she says.

"I know," you say, laughing. "I know."

\---

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [And You Carried the Bodies, and I Carried You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7589260) by [Olive_the_Olive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olive_the_Olive/pseuds/Olive_the_Olive)




End file.
